Tell Me Why It'll Be Good Again
by aroundpeginasquarehole
Summary: She didn't expect him to come back. So to lose the only thing that was going to be left of him almost destroys her.


She's silent the entire car ride back to her townhouse. He sits in the driver seat, looking over at her worriedly every chance he gets.

She stares out the window, her elbow perched on the windowsill, her head resting in her hand. She curls into herself as much as she possibly can, her left arm tucked between her stomach and her thighs.

She doesn't move from the position except to rip off the laminated paper bracelet from her wrist and throw it out the window. When they pull up to her apartment, he turns off the car. She still doesn't move and he sighs.

"Felicity, you're home." He watches her to see if she moves at all but all he gets is a small sigh.

"I know John." His shoulders fall and he watches as the one of the toughest women he knows stares at her front door, her hand tightening into a fist.

"Do you want me to come in?" He asks quietly. She shakes her head, freeing her left arm to wipe away her tears.

"I'll be fine." Diggle sighs.

"Felicity-" She turns suddenly then, her face blotchy and her eyes bloodshot with a few tears running down her face.

"I just need some time by myself right now John. I just need a few minutes, hours, hell maybe even a few days to just... to _understand._" John nods solemnly and leans across the console to place a kiss on her temple. She lets a few more tears slip out before he slides back to his seat.

"Okay. Just send me a text every three hours. I want to make sure you're okay."

_'I just want to make sure that after everything that's happened that you don't leave us too.'_

She hears the underlying meaning of the words, and nods, leaning over to kiss his cheek before getting out of the car. He watches until she walks in her door and then she hears his car pull away as she shuts the door.

She stands just inside the doorway for a minute before the pain and the loss of the past month and a half engulf her and she collapses into a sobbing heap on her entryway floor.

* * *

He still can't believe that it had worked. That he was sitting on a plane back to the States and that the threatening loom of the League was no longer above him, above _them._

At first he thought that Nyssa would lose. He had lost hope as soon as Ra's starting going after her with more fervor than he had after Oliver himself. But then Ra's had done the worst thing possible.

He had insulted Nyssa's love for Sara. He had taunted and teased her about the fact that he had lost the woman that had made her lose her right to be Heir to the Demon in the first place.

And it was then that Oliver saw a fire ignite in her eyes. He and the league had watched as Ra's was slowly overpowered by Nyssa before he was finally defeated with a blade through the heart.

They had all watched on in shock, unsure if the event that had unfolded before them had actually occured before Nyssa stood tall and proud.

"As of now, I'm am Ra's al Ghul. And you all shall obey." The rest of the league bowed to her in respect as Oliver stared at her. Nyssa bowed her head at him and Oliver nodded back.

"As for my first order," she started, the rest of the league lifting their heads. "Any member of the League of Assassins that wishes to no longer be associated us will be allowed to leave." Oliver perked up as Nyssa glanced at him.

"All of whom who wish to leave shall do so now." Oliver nodded his head, mouthing his thanks before rushing out of the room and towards his own to shed his league clothes for a set of his own.

Once his league clothes were shoved into a corner in his room, Oliver walked out of the compound and towards the airfield in which he and the rest of his friends had landed in a month and a half ago.

The plane that Nyssa had taken to arrived in Nanda Parbat was still sitting on the airstrip, waiting for Oliver to either give them the instructions to fly back empty or with him as the only passenger.

When he climbed up the stairs and ducked into the cockpit to let the pilot know that they were clear for takeoff, his heart swelled at the thought of all that would be waiting for him back home. Mainly Felicity.

* * *

Felicity sent Diggle a text checking in with him before gathering herself off the floor and heading to her bedroom. She took off the pair of scrubs that the nurse had given her once they had noticed the blood on her own clothes had ruined them and threw them in the garbage.

She searched for her period underwear before going down to her next drawer to pull out a baggy pair of pajama bottoms flowered with small penguins everywhere.

She slid them both on before taking off her dress shirt and searching for her old MIT hoodie. Once it was on and she felt like she was swimming in her own clothes she grabbed the small purchase she had made the other day along with her comforter before dragging it out to the living room where she grabbed her phone and headphones.

Once everything was in her arms she walked out the sliding glass door to her small balcony, wrapping her comforter around her before sinking to the ground. She turned her phone on airplane mode and set it to play _'Small Bump' _ repeatedly, a song she had never hoped, never _wanted _to be able to relate to, and turned up the volume before clutching the small purchase to her chest and bowing her head to begin crying again.

* * *

The first call he made as soon as he landed was to Felicity but her phone went immediately to voicemail so he sighed before assuming she was at work or doing Arrow stuff (even though there was no more Arrow).

He tried Thea next and her phone rang and rang before finally going to voicemail. He sighed once more before calling John.

It rang three times before John finally answered.

"I don't know how you got ahold of that phone but let me tell you-"

"John." Oliver interrupted. Silence filled the line as Oliver let him process that he was actually on the phone with him.

"What happened?" John asked finally, his voice gruff.

"It's a long story actually but I'll tell you when I see you. Do you know where Felicity is?" Silence filled the line again before John.

"That's a long story as well. Where are you and I'll come pick you up." Oliver's heart sped up at John's explanation to Felicity's whereabouts but swallowed the fear down.

"I'm at the Starling City Air Field."

"I'll be there in fifteen minutes." In the fifteen minutes that Oliver waited for John his mind wandered to all the possibilities of what could have happened to Felicity in the past month and a half that made her whereabouts, "a long story".

When John pulled into the airfield, Oliver immediately climbed in the car and before John could even register him being there, he blurted out the question that was very quickly going to drive him insane.

"Where's Felicity?" He blurted out. John raised an eyebrow.

"What the hell happened?!" John retorted right back. Oliver waved his hand as if to brush the question aside.

"That can wait where's Felicity?" John's face fell and Oliver's heart dropped.

"Something happened. She's okay... mostly."

"What happened?!" Oliver demanded. John put the car into drive and started the story as he drove Oliver to Felicity's townhouse.

* * *

With her headphones in her ears and her phone on airplane mode, she wouldn't have known if the apocalypse was happening, let alone that the man she was so in love with had made a sudden reappearance back in Starling and was knocking on her door.

She was too involved in her sorrow to notice that her front door opened and that Oliver was calling for her. It wasn't until she noticed the glass door sliding open that she knew anyone was there.

"Oh great and t now I'm hallucinating." She said, tucking her head into her knees, tears falling faster. She suddenly felt his presence next to her and she looked over at him in both relief and distress.

"Felicity." He murmured, tucking back a lock of her bright blonde hair. It was then that she looked at him and noticed that his eyes too were bloodshot. Her lip trembled before she launched herself into his arms, the small stuffed elephant flying off her lap and onto her balcony.

"I didn't even know for that long Oliver." She wailed, her voice breaking at his name.

"I knew for a day. A day!" She wept. Oliver pulled her farther into his lap and she wrapped her arms around him tighter.

"I knew long enough to call them 'Bug' and buy that damn elephant and then they were gone Oliver!" She cried out desperately.

"I thought that they were going to be all I had left of you and it made me love them even more than I did when I had the first thought of it being a possibility." He felt her body tremble.

"And it's all my fault that they're gone if only I had known sooner-" Oliver gently grabbed her chin and made her look up at him.

"Hey." She stopped sobbing, but tears still streamed down her cheeks.

"This will never be your fault. I will _never _blame you for this and you sure as hell won't blame yourself. I won't let you." She continued to look up at him, her lip trembling.

"It just wasn't their time yet. They weren't ready to have us as parents and to be loved by our family. But one day they will." Felicity's tremors stopped but her tears still fell but not with the frequency of before.

"So for now, we grieve that they weren't ready for the world yet." Felicity gave him a tearful smile, pressing a kiss to his neck before tucking her head underneath his chin as they cried together, the small gray elephant watching on.


End file.
